A blog about UK housing, Latin America, migration and the environment

housing policy

The government wants higher-earning council tenants to pay more rent because it’s concerned that hard-working people are “subsidising the lifestyles of those on higher than average incomes”. But have they looked carefully at whose housing is taxpayer-subsidised? And is the answer what they say it is? The UK Housing Review 2016, published this week (see […]

Ever since the Spending Review was published in November there has been uncertainty about where this leaves the HCA’s Affordable Homes Programme. In finalising the UK Housing Review, out today, we’ve been disentangling what has happened. Here is a summary of our findings although, of course, some figures may change again as a result of […]

Reclassification of housing associations was an accident waiting to happen, but it’s wrong to let it determine what kind of regulation should apply to the sector. It’s ten years since Steve Wilcox in the UK Housing Review first warned of the possibility that housing associations could be reclassified as public bodies. At that time the […]

In their general election manifesto, the Conservatives promised to ‘extend the Right to Buy to tenants in Housing Associations’. More than 1500 housing associations, all registered charities and some, like Peabody and Guinness, over a century old, would have to let tenants buy their houses at discounts of up to £103,000 each. The cost would […]

It’s a formidable task: there’s cross-party commitment to radically reducing child poverty in the next five years. Indeed, the Chancellor said in the March budget that ‘child poverty is down’. But is that true and what is needed to ensure that the number of children in poverty not only stays down but falls to 10% […]

A Whitehall-backed housing review has suggested councils could borrow from general funds if they have reached their Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap. But would such an approach make sense? When Natalie Elphicke and Keith House launched their new report on local authorities’ role in house building last week, they called on councils that have reached […]

When there’s a housing shortage, only a fraction of those affected end up sleeping on the streets or in council temporary accommodation. What happens to the rest? Analysis of data from the 2011 Census is building up a picture of those most affected by the housing crisis. The latest revelation is that well over a […]

Is it blindingly obvious that social landlords should sell off expensive properties to fund new house building? Not if you consider the unintended consequences and the better options offered by alternative strategies.

A review of The Housing Debate by Stuart Lowe There are plenty of books on the history of housing policy but few are as readable or as short as this one. It has other advantages, too. The author Stuart Lowe makes frequent international comparisons, asking questions like ‘why did Britain and Germany, with massive housing […]